First of all, the Member’s absolutely right to say that we do encourage that kind of thinking. As he knows, we’ve discussed many times how important it is to be able to harness new ideas from outside Government, and I very much welcome the comments that he made. He asked me a direct question and the answer is ‘yes’. We want to consider all potential structures in terms of running care homes, and that’s an idea that certainly can be looked at to see how viable that is.

In terms of LDPs, he is right to say that LDPs on their own are no longer sufficient. Regional planning has to become much stronger, and that is something that we intend to continue to progress with as part of the local government Bill. He’s absolutely right to say that we live in a world where, in reality, local government boundaries are not actually respected by planners, or by nature, or by geography, and it means that where one particular local authority will look at its LDP purely in the context of what happens in its own area, there can often be a knock-on effect elsewhere. And so, seeing regional planning in the future will be hugely important. The regional footprints issue is something that will be looked at as part of the local government Bill. We want to encourage local authorities to work together in order to put in place regional planning structures.

He asks me the question: do I have confidence that every local authority is able to deliver in terms of local economic strategies? The answer to that question is: no, they can’t on their own. That’s where they need to work together. I don’t believe that there’s sufficient depth in every single local authority in Wales to develop the kind of economic strategy that’s needed, but by working together on a regional footprint, that depth can be created. And, of course, we know that, again, economies don’t respect local government boundaries. It’s hugely important that Heads of the Valleys authorities can work together for the common good, rather than thinking, ‘We’re only going to look at what happens in our own area.’ We know the world doesn’t work that way. And that is something that we’re keen to do. I know that the Cabinet Secretary has worked very closely with local government leaders, and that message is understood. We can’t carry on in a way that sees Wales as 22 different areas that operate almost entirely independently of each other, and that’s why regional planning will become more important as part of that Bill.

Finally, he mentions brownfield sites. Yes, we want to see more remediation, but there’s a substantial cost to this. I know of at least one example that I dealt with when I was Minister for the environment, where just on one small site the remediation cost was £20 million. That was then, 10 years ago, because the original owners—the business no longer existed. And as a result of that, the liability ends up in the hands of the Welsh Government. It’s the same with opencast. Now, there are real issues with the remediation of opencast sites, which some of us in this Chamber will be more than familiar with, and what happens if the business that owns the site no longer exists—it goes into receivership or disappears completely. And so, these are issues that we wrestle with, but in principle, of course, we want to see more brownfield sites remediated, but we have to do that on the basis of an understanding that there is a limit of what we can afford to pay for them in the financial year.